President Trump met with Colombian President Iván Duque at the White House Wednesday to discuss ongoing efforts to topple the Venezuelan government, the same day that U.S. special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams faced questioning from Congress about his role in atrocities carried out in Latin America in the 1980s. This includes defending Guatemalan dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt’s campaign of mass murder and torture of indigenous people.
Roberto Lovato talking:
When I see Elliott Abrams on, in front of Congress, it stirs my subconscious, and I think it stirs the subconscious of the entire country, that wants to forget, but won’t and shouldn’t forget, what happened in Central America in the 1980s. So, many of the actors, many of the tactics and strategies, many of the political alliances we’re seeing around Venezuela have already—you know, that’s why you bring in Elliott Abrams, a cold warrior, a dirty warrior.
So, my reaction is, I start remembering my most recent visit to the forensics labs in El Salvador, where I saw the skulls, that they’re still processing, of little children killed in El Mozote. As we speak right now, in El Mozote today, they’re starting another round of exhumations and digging, after 30 years, of El Mozote, where nearly almost a thousand people were killed, including many—mostly women, children and elderly people. And I would just correct some of the congressmembers to say that
(The El Mozote massacre of December 1981.)
it wasn’t just El Mozote massacre. You have the entire landscape of El Salvador massacre, was, you know, dotted with mass graves, because of mass graves of entire towns. And then you have Guatemala—right?—where towns, Mayan towns mostly, were entirely wiped out, just like in El Mozote. And you have the Contra war in Nicaragua.
So, when I see Elliott Abrams, I have a very visceral reaction, and I have to kind of breathe in. And really I just can’t—if I wasn’t this old, I would be in—I would sigh in disbelief. But it just confirms that the United States is in decline. He’s clearly a sign of U.S. degeneracy. And his appointment shows that the Trump administration is willing to re-unleash the darkest forces in U.S. modern history for war, destabilization and death squads. So, that’s my reaction.
I would point people to look at his titles that he gets. Like his title—his first title under the Reagan administration was assistant secretary for human rights and humanitarian affairs. So, there’s a lot of “human” in Elliott Abrams’ titles. But in terms of the policies, he was primarily focused on the inhuman, right? The mass graves, the supporting governments and militaries like that of Efraín Ríos Montt, who the United Nations and the Guatemalan Supreme Court, more recently, declared responsible for—and the Guatemalan government—responsible for genocide.
So, Elliott Abrams—even after it was clear acts were perpetrated—defended, helped get funding for, went before Congress and to the American people to say, “Hey, you know, this is our guy.” And the guy that Ronald Reagan called—said had gotten a, quote, “bum rap” because of criticisms on his human rights record for killing thousands of Mayans.
So, in El Salvador, similarly, after—for example, after the wars ended, and you have the United Nations Truth Commission report in 1993, you know, finds that the government that Ronald Reagan and Elliott Abrams backed unconditionally throughout the early ’80s, that perpetrated massacres and wiping out entire towns, had perpetrated 85 percent of the killings of civilians during the war. So, Elliott Abrams, after that report came out, that quote that Ilhan Omar made—mentioned about the “fabulous achievement,” here is his response to the United Nations Truth Commission report, was to say that the United States’ accomplishments in El Salvador were, quote, “a fabulous accomplishment.”
So, we’re dealing with severely dark forces. And we’re dealing with a situation where not just dark forces out of the United States, but dark forces in Latin America, that are linked to extreme violence, are now having suits and ties put on them, and put out as leaders of this new Venezuela that they want.
when you’re talking about the Venezuelan opposition, you have understand that it’s a broad spectrum, that represents socialists and leftists who are critical of Maduro, to people that are in the middle, to the extreme right and to the extreme right that’s violent.
The part that the United States—and you can see pictures of Elliott Abrams meeting with some of the people, like Antonio Ledezma or David Smolansky, who I tried to interview, but he avoided me—and I’ll talk about that—and others, including Mr. Vecchio. You’re talking about the extreme right, and so extreme, in fact, that the right wing—some of the right wing in Venezuela is really mad at, at Guaidó and the people around the Voluntad Popular party, the Popular Will party, who have basically had tight relations with the extreme right here in the United States.
So it’s no coincidence that you’re going to get somebody as dark and nefarious as Elliott Abrams meeting with the extreme and violent right. They were in the streets. They’re part of a generation that some call los cachorros de la reacción, “the cubs of reaction,” “the reactionary cubs.” These are people that, with U.S. funding, through USAID and other programs, got training in mobilization for protests. And what used to be—according to one of my sources in the intelligence community, what used to be covert operations have now gone overt, through the State Department and State Department programs.
And so, one of those programs, for example, is the funding of youth programs, which started like with a group called Otpor! in Serbia, who the U.S. has used as a trainer for youth groups in destabilization programs. And so, there’s groups like one in my article called JAVU, that was in the streets during the 2014 violence, which both sides kill people, but you only heard, you know, the government killing. The youth groups were staging violent actions in the streets called guarimbas. And then the guarimbas resulted in black people being burned to death—being burned, being lit on fire. It resulted in bombings. There were assassinations of Chavistas. There was a man that I interviewed whose son, Elvis Duran, was beheaded by barbed wire set by this peaceful opposition that you’re seeing on your screen. So, Vecchio and others in the Voluntad Popular party are linked to these extremely violent protests. And you can even see on YouTube and Max Blumenthal at MintPress put out a video of Juan Guaidó in a guarimba where he’s dressed up like all the other violent youth.
So, again, you have Elliott Abrams, somebody who’s a certifiable criminal against humanity, meeting with formerly visibly violent youth, who are now suited and tied, and meeting with Nancy Pelosi, meeting with Trump administration officials, meeting with presidents of Colombia, meeting in Europe, getting human rights prizes. I mean, this is—I teach at UCLA. I teach a class in media. And I’m just getting a cornucopia of manufactured consent, because I can’t think of a clear example, when you have Elliott Abrams talking about democracy with—in terms of youth that is known to be linked to extreme and even terrorist elements, if you’re talking about somebody like a young man named Lorent Saleh—S-A-L-E-H. You can see him on YouTube. Lorent Saleh is out there meeting with presidents, with—he just met with Álvaro Uribe, a man who’s—we don’t need to tell you, Amy—you know, 10,000 people were killed, according to a report, by Álvaro Uribe’s government in Colombia, but there was no invasion. So, Saleh is out there meeting. But if you look on YouTube, you can find videos where he was caught plotting assassination attempts, plotting bombings, plotting all manner of what we, in this context, would call a terrorist—terrorist actions. So, this is the kind of manufactured consent we have going on right now.
– Wednesday’s House hearing on Venezuela came less than a week after McClatchy reported that Venezuelan authorities uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city. The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air, which is owned by a man who once ran companies tied to the CIA’s rendition program. The plane has made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11th, the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term.
you had like 19 semiautomatic weapons, some radios and other equipment, that we don’t have the full, yet, chart of what was on that plane. But the Venezuelan government has put out, you know, weapons and things that they say were found, by a company called 21 Air, that has links to another company called Gemini, which, oddly enough, take us back to 1986, when the CIA was caught—and Abrams, were caught transferring arms to the Nicaraguan Contras to perpetrate crimes against humanity against thousands of Nicaraguan civilians.
So, again, you have the political unconscious of the United States being stirred. And I’m hoping that my peers in the media will start doing like that McClatchy reporter, who I think, you know, is doing his job as an investigative journalist in digging deep to find out who are these people behind our policies, but also who are these people in Venezuela that we’re funding, that—everybody says, “Hey, I’ve never heard of Juan Guaidó.” Well, you can look on YouTube, and you can see that he was involved in violent guarimbas. Why aren’t you reporting these things? That’s my challenge to my peers in the press, you know, and to use their investigative budgets to go and find out, like we used to do, who’s who in this thing, instead of propping up the talking points, pushing the talking points of the Trump administration. I mean, and sadly, even the—
the sector of the progressive community is—instead of mounting a powerful anti-intervention movement against people like Elliott Abrams, they’re actually joining Trump in this adventure. And it’s curious, to say the least.
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Roberto Lovato
independent journalist working out of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.
— source democracynow.org | Feb 14, 2019